The business press is obsessed with Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction). It is America’s largest company, both based on employee count, which totals 1.7 million in the United States, and on revenue. The Walton family, who own much of Walmart, is among the richest in the world. And Walmart is often criticized for paying its workers hourly wages so low that many live at the poverty line.
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The obsession often turns to making Walmart a company that it is not. A recent Wall Street Journal headline read: “Walmart Lays Off Hundreds of Corporate Workers.” In the second paragraph of the story, the figure is put at 200. Stories based on this ran in The New York Times, Bloomberg, CNBC and CNN Business, among others.
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The reason given for the layoffs is that Walmart cut its earnings guidance. It also announced that revenue grew 2.4% to $141.6 billion in the most recent quarter. Net income was $2.1 billion. Will Walmart have sales problems with a recession? Yes. Will it undermine the retailer’s future? No.
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Consider how tiny that 200 figure is compared to 1.7 million workers. Consider how little it saves Walmart in expenses. Consider how far it is from an actual reorganization.
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Walmart’s move does not deserve large headlines. It is barely a footnote in the scheme of things. Better to look at companies that have laid off thousands or more, against revenue bases that are much smaller.
Did Walmart Cut Hundreds of Workers? No
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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